This invention relates to coded electrical waveforms and a method for recording and interpreting signals from the brain.
The brain is one of the last great frontiers in the biomedical sciences. The unraveling of its mysterious complexities as related to medical diagnosis and treatment is a quest as great as inventing technology and gathering resources to travel to the moon. Brain signals direct the harmony of the human body much like a conductor controls and directs his orchestra. The brain senses, computes and decides before it sends electrical and chemical instructions to the body it lives in. The brain is a magnificent information processor that not only controls the body it lives in, but communicates with other brains residing in other bodies. Such interrelation to another brain can alter the electrochemical function in both brains.
Like no other creature, mankind over the centuries has slowly observed his own health status and devised treatments to heal diseases and injuries. Because historically man has preserved this medical knowledge in books it served as the basis of early university scientific training. The last two centuries of education and research in biomedicine have laid down a detailed understanding about the human anatomy and the relative function of its components, all of which serve as a platform for today's medical treatments.
Modern scientists have expanded into specialties that never existed before. Today, scientists study the genetic makeup of humans and are heading toward predicting and tinkering with genes to forestall future ailments. Then there are studies on a cellular level that have determined the microscopic workings of many of the ubiquitous chemical and electrical processes that link and regulate life processes.
Although scientists and physicians can treat every organ in the body with surgery or medications, it is only in the last half century that we have come to grips with electrical treatment of organ systems. Examples of this development are the cardiac defibrillator and pacemaker or electrical brain stimulator for Parkinson's. Meticulous anatomical studies, animal experiments and recording the consequences of human brain injuries and diseases have served as the base information to understand how the brain works.
There has been dynamic cellular and molecular biology work performed in university laboratories over the past 20 years that is still ongoing. This has opened up bio-functional details that were previously unknown. In addition, recent publication of marvelous texts on neuroanatomy and physiology have illuminated the physical relationship to actual function of the nervous system.
This fountain of knowledge now makes it possible to open up a new technology for electrical modulation of organ function. Such knowledge opens new electrical treatment modalities for life threatening emergencies and cardiac, respiratory and digestive conditions, unaccessible before. This new technology makes it possible to detect the electrical waveforms being generated by the brain and to ascertain what the signal is for. This invention provides a way to evolve the known and unknown waveforms into electronic devices which can broadcast such signals onto selected nervous system components as medical treatments.
It is not commonly understood how brain electrical signals modulate functions of the body as a whole, but there is an understanding to a limited degree of how organs are modulated. The brain controls critical functions of all human and animal body organ systems in a coordinated way to keep the body alive and hence to keep alive the brain itself. The brain wants to live and go on into the future, so it fine tunes and modulates the cardiovascular, respiratory and digestive systems among others, to integrate the needs of all. Maintaining optimum performance is more difficult as the body and brain age due to cellular degradation. But if critical organ functions can be reset in a non or minimally invasive way, both quality and life-extension may benefit.
The brain controls, via the autonomic nervous network, the vegetative functions of the major organs. These organs represent the minimal requirement to support life. These are the organs that must function even if the brain is in coma, and the owner unable to think or do anything, if life is to continue. Major organ function must always be maintained at a certain minimal level for maintaining organism life, otherwise death is certain. Such control is done via a nervous system that consists of two main divisions: a) the central nervous system (brain) in concert with the spinal cord, and b) the peripheral system consisting of cranial and spinal nerves plus ganglia.
Within the central nervous system is the autonomic nervous system (ANS) which carries all efferent impulses except for the motor innervation of skeletal muscles. The ANS is mainly outside voluntary control and regulates the heart beat and smooth muscle contraction of many organs including digestive and respiratory. Also, the ANS controls exocrine and some endocrine organs along with certain metabolic activity. In addition, there is activity from parasympathetic and sympathetic innervation which oppose each other to attain a balance of tissue and organ function. The nervous system is constructed of nerve cells called neurons which have supporting cells called glia. Neurons are electrically excitable and provide a method whereby instructions are carried from the brain to modulate critical functions.
The neuron has a protrusion called an axon that can be as short as a few millimeters or longer than a meter. The axon provides and uses nerve fibers to carry electrical signals that end at a synapse. A synapse is at the end of an axon. It faces another synapse from a neighboring axon across a gap. To cross such a gap the electrical signal from the brain must engage in specialized chemical or electrical transduction reactions to allow the crossing of the electrical signal to the next axon or to a nerve plexus or ganglion located on an actual organ. Neurons have a body (or soma) and are the morphological and functioning unit that sends signals along their axons until such signals instruct the organ it reaches. Operative neuron units that carry signals from the brain are classified as “efferent” nerves. “Afferent” nerves are those that carry sensor or status information to the brain. The brain computes and generates those electrical signals that are required as a result of the incoming data (afferent signals) it has collected. Such afferent signals received by the brain provide sophisticated organ and overall body operational status. Such information spans the entire body from within and also environmental status detected from areas immediately outside of the body proper and at some distance.
Outside data reaching the brain may relate to temperature change or a dangerous situation like approaching strangers or even potential mating possibilities. Such outside afferent sensory data is provided by eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. In addition, there is proprioception providing sensation in the musculoskeletal system, i.e., deep sensations. Other afferent-type nerve sensors called nociceptors detect noxious stimuli and pain. Nociceptors alert the brain to nasty things that are deemed undesirable and require some immediate action within the brain. This range of information arriving at the brain is processed for action. The efferent nerves provide quick adjustment on performance for the various organ systems or even instruct the skeletal-motor neurons to run, walk, hide, help or physically approach for more sensory information.
The invention describes specific waveforms and a method to precisely acquire the key operative electrical waveforms from selected axons, nerveplexus or ganglion connections of the autonomic nervous system. Such waveform data is stored and categorized as to the actual purpose of such signals. This is much like the ongoing effort to identify and categorize human genes. Once the purpose of individual coded electrical waveforms have been determined, they will be installed in a specific application microprocessor for electrical broadcast or conduction into the nervous system, in order to treat or correct selected medical conditions.